


take on the universe one breath at a time

by mnemosynes_tears



Series: What's In A Name? [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Awesome Darcy Lewis, Clint Is a Good Bro, Darcy Lewis Feels, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Military Backstory, Strong Female Characters, What it means to move on, What it means to remember, Widowhood, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 02:15:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5610010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemosynes_tears/pseuds/mnemosynes_tears
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy Lewis wasn't always Darcy Lewis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	take on the universe one breath at a time

**Author's Note:**

> This started off as a headcanon and grew and grew until I could no longer deny it actually had a life of its own. This is a Frankenfic.

There’s a reason Darcy Lewis insists that her proper title is “Ms.,” and yeah, okay, part of it stems from her Women in Modern Media Representations class (ANTH 207, she rocked that shit). There’s a reason Darcy Lewis started college at 23 instead of 18, and there’s a reason she doesn’t have any student loans to pay off despite having parents who don’t believe higher education is anything more than a waste of a good planting season. There’s a reason nothing phases Darcy Lewis.

That reason is Jack Lewis, who married Darcy Rae Billings one month after her high school graduation and one year after he shipped off to Air Force basic training.

Darcy Rae spends four and a half years in base housing, working for an off-base IT consulting firm and waiting for Jack’s six-years-in-service date so he can transfer his G.I. bill benefits to her. They’re based in Langley when she decides on a school, and Culver is the closest one that has a program she thinks she’ll enjoy (Political Science) that the DoD also approves of. Jack’s next deployment is to the Middle East, so she stays in Virginia and conveniently doesn’t have to transfer.

Darcy Rae is 27 and one semester from finishing her Bachelor’s degree when two members of the chaplain corps show up and her entire world turns upside down.

When they bury USAF Staff Sergeant Lewis, his widow accepts a folded flag from the pararescueman who risked his own life to bring her husband’s body back. He’d lost his partner while attempting to save Jack Lewis, and Darcy Rae whispers “thank you” to him while _Taps_ plays in the background.

She accepts an internship with Dr. Foster not because she couldn’t handle O-Chem, but because there’s nothing in Virginia for her without Jack. She takes off her wedding and engagement rings and puts them on a necklace next to his dog tags so that well-intentioned strangers will stop making her burst into tears at the grocery store. She introduces herself as “Darcy Lewis” but no longer checks “Mrs.” as her preferred title, because that invites questions she isn’t willing to answer just yet. A semester away looking up at the stars, where she can see her Jack smiling down at her from the heavens? That’s exactly what she needs.

So Darcy Lewis keeps living, keeps cracking jokes and smiling, even though at night there’s an empty space beside her and it leaves her cold every morning. She stomps out the drawl that reminds her of their hometown and stomps on the instep of four Puente Antigua boys before their hands learn to keep away. She’s dealt with government before, _lived_  with it, so she recognizes the bearing of some of the jack-booted thugs who take Jane’s research and salutes their service in her heart even as she yells at the man in charge. ( _He_ ’s not military; she can tell.) 

She keeps following Jane around after she gets her degree, because there’s nobody there to watch Darcy Lewis walk across a stage and get a piece of paper that used to mean something to her. In New Mexico, in Norway, in England -- one can always tell a military spouse by how they stay calm under pressure, and anybody else would have packed up long ago. But Darcy Rae Lewis is made of sterner stuff, molded herself into sterner stuff, forged herself a backbone of steel and ice surrounded by off-topic jokes and loud music. Darcy Rae Lewis stays steady and true and hands Jane whatever tools she needs.

When Tony Stark invites Dr. Foster (“and staff, of course”) to Avengers’ Tower in New York City, she isn’t as impressed with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes as she thought she’d be. Army Ranger Jack-Booted Thug is apparently one of them, and he still hasn’t given her back her iPod -- a 21st birthday present from Jack’s parents, who had an idea of how much she’d learned to hate silence during Jack’s deployments. And Dr. Banner, from the Culver biology department? The only thing heroic about him was his ability to teach freshmen without becoming a towering ball of rage.

Darcy also isn’t impressed with Steve Rogers. When she says “Pleased to meet you, Captain Rogers,” he responds with “likewise, Miss Lewis,” and nobody corrects him. Not even Dr. Stark, and Darcy knows for certain that he’s hacked the government records of every single one of Jane’s employees. (Beyond that, his company is run by arguably the world’s most powerful woman, and Darcy can’t imagine that Virginia Potts would allow anyone to call her “Miss” either.) “Call me Darcy” gets him to blush and stammer, and she bites her lip to hold back a bad joke about Army boys. He does it three more times in the first week they’re there, and she starts avoiding him after that.

There’s nothing about the city that calls to Darcy Rae. Every morning she pulls on her necklace and kisses her rings, and every evening she looks up at the ugly sky and searches for Jack’s hidden stars. When a frenzied Jane breaks into her room at 3 in the morning insisting that the light pollution in New York City is obscuring a natural phenomenon that will lead to revolutionary breakthroughs in interstellar travel, Darcy grabs her go-bag and follows.

They take a helicopter to one of Stark Industries’ old warehouses, now an Avengers training facility, and at least three Avengers tag along. Darcy isn’t really sure which ones, but it’s 5 a.m. and Jane wants to get set up before sunrise, so Darcy heads off to the coffee machine and inadvertently wanders into the Avengers’ gym.

Darcy isn’t expecting to see Master Sergeant Wilson there.

Darcy wasn’t expecting to see Master Sergeant Wilson ever again.

He has some sort of odd metal backpack on, and Darcy gets a cold, sick feeling in her stomach. She knows what those are. Military spouses aren’t supposed to know military secrets -- but some things you just can’t hide, especially from an ex-IT consultant, and this was one of them. She’s pretty sure that’s the exact same EXO-7 MSG Wilson was wearing when he pulled her husband’s bleeding body off the Afghani sand, and it’s the same EXO-7 he was wearing when TSgt Cooper was shot out of the air next to him. Darcy’s vision is narrowing in and there’s nothing else in the room but her and that backpack and the man wearing it who saved Jack’s body but not his life and --

“Ms. Lewis?”

It’s the redheaded Avenger, the one who never introduced herself. She stayed in the background at the Tower and seemed to think that if she wore a skirt suit, the science team would think she was Ms. Potts’ PA. (In all fairness, Darcy’s pretty sure none of scientists she looks after pay enough attention to notice King Kong, much less a face outside the labs.) Sergeant Wilson turns around and his face goes blank for four seconds as he tries to place where he’s seen her before. The awful tunneling feeling disappears as soon as the EXO-7 is out of sight.

“Mrs. Lewis, hi,” he says, when he determines who she is, and then the confusion: “um, what are you doing here?”

“Sergeant Wilson,” she returns, still faint, but with her steel backbone returning every second as she locks away the memory of the last time she saw his face. She’s not sure what _he_ ’s here for, actually, so she keeps her answer as vague as possible. “I work with the science teams at SI; we just got here this morning.”

“Well, uh, welcome.” He looks around, a little awkward. “Oh, hey, Natasha, what’s up?”

Darcy slips away as the redheaded Avenger returns Sergeant Wilson’s greeting, finding the coffee pot with Army Ranger Jack-Booted Thug Avenger in the staff kitchen. He pours her a cup without asking and she’s savoring the third mouthful when she hears “why did Falcon call you Mrs. Lewis?” and sprays hot liquid all over her table mate.

Army Ranger Jack-Booted Thug Avenger gives his teammate a dirty look and hands Darcy a roll of paper towels. She nods her thanks to him and turns to see the redheaded Avenger standing with Captain Boy Scout.

“Master Sergeant Wilson,” she says slowly, assuming that’s who they’re talking about, “handed me an American flag three years ago.” She doesn’t think they deserve more than this. “He can call me whatever the hell he wants.”

Army Ranger Jack-Booted Thug Avenger doesn't seem to find this news surprising, but he would have been briefed in-depth during the original New Mexico incident, and it's unlikely SHIELD would have missed an intern receiving USAF survivor's benefits. The redheaded Avenger -- and Darcy's really got to figure out what she does, because the color of her hair can't be her only defining characteristic -- raises an eyebrow, and Captain Boy Scout turns pale.

Darcy Rae looks past the superheroes, standing wan in the moonlight, and there's a wall of windows behind them. Jane's had all the external lights turned off, so there's nothing blocking her experiments, and it's still dark outside and all Darcy can see are stars. 

Jack is in the stars, she thinks to herself, Jack is up there in the stars and the stars are twinkling and _Jack is smiling at me through the stars_.

And she makes a decision.

"My married name is Lewis," she says, suddenly enough that Army Ranger Jack-Booted Thug Avenger starts and spills his coffee over the edge of his cup. "So 'Mrs. Lewis' is what I went by before my husband died in the line of duty." She tugs out her necklace, dog tags worn and rings still as lustrous as the day Jack put them on her finger. "We were married for nearly ten years, and I don't like to talk about him because all I hear is 'you're still young' or 'you've still got time' or 'time heals all wounds' and that's not _true_ , it _doesn't_ , he's still gone and he's still _dead_." The stars twinkle less now, as the first purple roots of a sunrise stain the sky.

"I don't go by 'Mrs. Lewis' anymore because it hurts to hear people ask about my husband or about the children that we didn't have. I choose not to define myself like that because I'm more than an Air Force widow. People can't tell if you're married when you use 'Ms.,' so I started using that a few months after the funeral." The purple is spreading, slowly, almost darker than the blue around it. It's bruising the starlight on the horizon, but Darcy Rae keeps talking because Jack is still grinning at her from the edges of dawn.

"Master Sergeant Wilson brought me back my husband's body at great personal expense," she continues, "and I haven't seen him since he handed me that flag and they lowered Jack's coffin. He called me 'Mrs. Lewis' then, and if he wants to call me 'Mrs. Lewis' now I won't stop him, but nobody else on this base has my permission to do so. If you'd like to address me formally, you can use 'Ms. Lewis'; you can call me Darcy if you want. I'm not picky. But I don't want to hear a single Avenger call me 'Mrs. Lewis.' And, Captain--" she fixes her gaze on Captain Boy Scout, whose posture is more ramrod-upright than usual and whose eyes are straight ahead, "if you call me 'Miss Lewis' again, I'm going to have words with your commanding officer. Is that understood?"

The Captain barks out "ma'am, yes ma'am!" with heartening urgency. It's good to know she hasn't lost her 'military spouse' voice even after 3 years away from it all, and that sitting down at 5 in the morning with bedhead and a Snoopy nightshirt she can make Captain America hop-to. 

The redheaded Avenger -- Darcy supposes that 'Eyebrow Twitching Avenger' isn't quite dignified enough for this woman -- stares at her. It might have been intimidating, if Darcy hadn't already returned her scrutiny to the window beyond both superheroes, and the cloudy periwinkle creeping up the perimeter of her vision. There's no pink yet, but the blues are starting to take on a lilac hue that's going to blush the sky any minute now. The stars fade with every breath and every carmine streak that bleeds across her view.

The other woman nods at her, and pivots on her heel to leave. Captain Rogers hesitates, executes a slight bow, and mutters something that might be "by your leave, ma'am" before following. Darcy slumps in her chair and turns back to the table where her coffee is waiting.

Army Ranger Jack-Booted Thug Avenger salutes her with his mug and takes another slurp. "'s a good threat," he tells her, as though he hadn't just watch her talk about her husband in public for the first time in three years. 

"Hard to be an Air Force wife for a decade and not figure out the thing men fear most is their C.O.," she shrugged back. "Women too, actually, but you need it more with the men."

"Do you even know who Captain America's C.O. is?"

"No, but he doesn't know that I don't know, so it still works fine."

Army Ranger Jack-Booted Thug Avenger cocks his head to the side and studies her face a little. In the dim not-quite-dawn light, he looks older than she knows he is, and she remembers that his file, too, has a blank spot where "Martial Status" should be listed.

"I'm sorry for your loss," he says. Darcy Rae nods. 

"Thank you, Specialist," she replies. "If you don't mind, I should go help Dr. Foster with her setup now. 'Preciate the coffee."

She pours another travel mug for Jane, who isn't going to sleep no matter how much she needs to, and tops up her own before heading out the door. There's a sky waiting to be viewed, to be scrutinized and mapped and examined, and beyond the new rays of morning light nothing can dim the knowledge that the stars still twinkle at her when she can't see them.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am fairly certain Google now believes that I am joining the US military solely for the death benefits.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Lazarus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7347502) by [Zyrieen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zyrieen/pseuds/Zyrieen)




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